Hey there. Have you been wasting your valuable time and hard-earned cash watching movies from genres as varied as sports action, dying young drama, Christmas reunion, marital discord, family entertainment, stoner comedy and more?
Save hours and euro this festive season with The Best Man Holiday, a sequel to the 1999 adultery comedy The Best Man, and see all of the above.
When the cast of the original film descend on the palatial family home of football superstar Lance (Morris Chestnut) for the "Holidays", all hell predictably breaks loose. Between catfights, Taye Diggs sneaking around, Terrence Howard's marijuana-fuelled shenanigans and Chestnut's upcoming attempt on the Russian record for the New York Giants (me, neither), Monica Calhoun's dignified heroine is slowly succumbing to cancer.
The shifts in tone are weirder than this ragbag of elements suggests. The dialogue sandwiches colourful swears and sexual innuendo between many, many prayers. The affluent setting sits uneasily beside a subplot about recessionary cutbacks. Cute kids sing Oh Night Divine; an oversexed reality TV star (Melissa De Sousa) prowls the corridors; an academic turns up on YouTube performing a sexual act for money. Huh?
You can’t say it’s dull, nor can you deny the crass effectiveness of its teary denouement. But Diggs’s central character is just too self-involved and wrong-headed to keep us onside. And the scattershot, random clichés just keep on coming.
The Best Man Holiday pigs out on every plot at a slow, bloated Christmas pace. Watch out, movie punters. We're segueing into Part Three.
